


Match Point

by DrummerDancer



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 14:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5787871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrummerDancer/pseuds/DrummerDancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because winning isn't always easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Match Point

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: None

There comes a time in a duel when Yami knows he’s got the win secure. It’s a thickening inside his chest, a solidarity spreading shoulder to shoulder, when the duel is no longer an even volley between players. His opponent is making hasty moves, or making his moves draw-by-draw, executing quick plays instead of chains. Yami can count the turns left on his hand, he can grasp the end in the foreground, the familiar taste of victory his to enjoy again. The harder fought the battle, the greater the reward coming out on top really is. It’s why he enjoys worthy adversaries who can match his moves par-for-par.

 

But with Kaiba, the win always comes with mixed emotions. Kaiba puts his everything into their duels—his anger, his hate, his passion, his fury. It lacks the coolness Yami’s used to seeing in the classroom, when Kaiba barely acknowledges Yugi or his friends or even the teacher, who no longer bothers to call on him to participate in class. His attitude screams _prickly_ , a young man sitting in the back with a book in his face, detesting interaction.

 

But in these rare duels they share, Kaiba comes alive in his ire, staring Yami down as they spar with their words like spears, their moves like blades, until they’re both left bruised and bleeding on the inside, with everything on the line between them. A loss is deadly, a win only a small victory of a greater war. At the turning point, Yami isn’t pleased to know he’ll win over Kaiba—it pains him, because he sees so clearly what Kaiba loses past the ante, or what Kaiba will pull to prevent the end at all costs. His life means nothing to him when Mokuba’s is on the line—past all the anger and the hate, there’s desperation in Kaiba’s eyes born not out of vanity, but of an instinct of the core; that if Kaiba can win, he can protect those he cares for, body, mind, and soul.

 

Yami’s reasons for dueling are selfish in comparison; he’s dueling now to get his own memories back, because that’s the only path he knows how to follow. Is it right for him to so callously dash Kaiba’s way, when his is the more noble and true than Yami’s own?

 

Or does fate wish Kaiba to lose, to foster more and more of that same hate he bolsters now? It kisses the edges of their duel, when Kaiba thinks he has the edge. How his laugh goes sharp at the end, sadistic, because that’s all Kaiba’s ever been given on the road that’s led them here. He knows no path except that towards the future.

 

Maybe Yami can change that, though. Maybe this new loss he deals will lend itself to different paths, of reflection and healing. Maybe this could be Kaiba’s turning point as well.

 

Maybe they both can get something out of a win.


End file.
